I'll protect you
by Terrapin Kavalier
Summary: Malus promised Carrie that he will protect her, but what if he fails?


Light drops of rain fluttered to the ground, carried far from their original destination by the slight wind that caressed the leaves of the trees. A rattling sound came from the trees that surrounded the little spot in the forest. Though no trees grew there, it was still cluttered. Pieces of broken ceramic containers and wooden desks and closets littered the ground that would otherwise be a peaceful clearing. This was where the villagers buried the burnt bodies of witches and discarded their tainted belongings.  
  
The villagers usually shunned this place--not a surprising thing, given the constant fear of demons and vampires inspired by being near the home of Dracula. This day, though, there was a young man in the clearing. His hair was dark blue, and he wore a coat of matching color. Perhaps it was because of the lack of light, but his eye seemed to change from the same blue to purple from moment to moment. The young man stared at the pile of broken furnishings, though his thoughts lay on what was beneath the junk.  
  
As he thought about the woman whose body was under that pile of junk, two trails of liquid ran down his cheek. He emitted a low, sobbing sound as he lowered his gaze to his feet like a guilty child. For a minute, his head hung low, and the drops of rain ran down his hair in numerous trails that formed drops of water as they reached the end, but he slowly lifted his head toward heaven. When the drizzling could freely fall on his face, he uttered two barely audible syllables, "Carrie."  
  
As if guilty about calling to her, he quickly lowered his gaze to the ground. With the tone of a confessing sinner, he began to speak, his voice trembling with every sound. "I could not protect you, Carrie, like I promised I would."  
  
He opened his mouth as if to speak more, but he just shook his head. "I'm sorry," was all he could utter before turning away from the makeshift graveyard. When he reached the first tree of the forest, though, he stopped. Although his gaze was fixed on the root of the young tree, and his hand was wrapped around its slender stalk, he was not aware of it. He was reminiscing.  
  
Oddly enough, he could not remember very well his first encounter with Carrie. He had been enjoying the pretense of running away from three of his loyal minions that would not dare hurt even a strand of his hair. It was not until their second meeting that he began to fall for her. Not until then did he realize her determination, and not after that could he truly see her.  
  
Even though she knew nothing about him or his family, she promised to avenge his parents. Only then did he realize that Carrie was not just an angry and vengeful villager who tagged along with the Belmont. At that moment, he could almost feel the warmth that emanated from Carrie's body-- warmth that his cursed body had not been able to feel for a long time. From that time on, she became his sun.  
  
His thoughts wandered to his sudden proposal to Carrie. They had been riding on the back of a peasant's wagon. He could not help but chuckle a bit as he pictured the scene--how he must have sounded like a giddy little boy who was talking to his hero. The memories afforded him quite a bit of comfort until he got to his oath. "Whatever happens, I'll protect you." 'How lightly were those words spoken at the time,' he thought, 'and how heavily they weigh eight years later."  
  
Malus thought of the years he spent waiting for the two to be grown: waiting for the day of their marriage. He had visited Carrie almost every day, though his apprenticeship to the town's tailor had sometimes prevented this visit. Almost daily, he braved the pain of the light of day to see his little sun in the woods or the shop. She had been apprenticed, appropriately, to the town's physician, who had her mixing his prescriptions and gather herbs in the forest, and their daily sojourn into the woods or the depth of his lab had been their time of happiness. He was content even when Carrie was concentrating on brewing a potion, as long as he was near his little sun.  
  
'Alas, it was your devotion to the ingrates that caused the tragedy,' Malus thought. He recalled the haste with which he ran to the physician's house when he heard of his death--he had almost betrayed his ability of flying. When he entered the upstairs rooms, he found Carrie by the bed, crying over the physician's body while the town's parish priest stood gave a sermon over the corpse. How he would have liked to be her source of warmth like she was to him at that moment, but he knew better than to let them really touch, for his body was still as cold as night.  
  
After that day, Carrie became the town's physician. She invented many brews that were not in the physician's books within a year. She had told him that she could feel the use of the herbs in the forest because of the magic that flowed through her veins. The townspeople, though, soon became suspicious and talked about her, but Malus did not notice. He was too taken with the light and warmth that she embodied.  
  
He regretted ever taking that job, but he was eager to act the role of a normal townsman. It was almost his coming of age ceremony. The tailor had sent him to the house of a businessman in the next town to deliver and fit a suit that Malus made. When he came back, he noticed the smoke that rose above the town. He thought nothing of it until he stepped into the town square, upon which a drunkard had cried about the death of the witch. Almost immediately, Malus pulled the man's collars up to him and asked who it was. The next words uttered by the man blocked his senses. "That Fernandez." was all he heard.  
  
"Whatever happens, I'll protect you," Malus whispered, but his voice soon rose. "Hah! I couldn't even protect you from a mob of insects."  
  
As he laughed, his hands tightened around the newly grown tree's trunk. With a loud crack, it was snapped in half. Malus raised his head toward the sky and screamed, "Damn you, you ungrateful, weak, selfish bastards! You've taken five years of my hard work! That warmth. what power it must have been! Power like the power of the sun was almost mine!" He paused and gasped while throwing the upper half of the tree to the ground. "That power was almost mine. but you barbarians had to take it away from me. I will not forget this debt."  
  
With that, Malus walked away from the clearing. 


End file.
